dekedangle_rpfanon | #26 — Vanek! with a Jurco

This is the twenty-sixth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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Well, at least they'll never let Torts coach the team again.

Torts suck but the people making the selections Lombardi/Burke/Poile sucks just as hard or more so.

I blame Burke for everything.

It's Holmgren I think, not Poile.

ayrt. You're right Polie part of the Olympic selections.

If Zach Werenski makes CBJ and Torts ruins him I will burn Columbus down.

Torts really didn't ruin McDonagh in New York. Their young players were fine under him for the most part.

Well, they claimed they only chose him because he didn't have a job at the time and they figured he'd be able to devote time it. I wouldn't bet on Torts not getting fired and being between jobs the next time a national team event rolls around.

To be honest, I think in general people who believe heads will roll over this are being overly optimistic. The loss to Team Europe seems to be being blamed on 1) Patrick Kane's mistake and 2) Lazy backchecking. Which means they'll probably decide having any skill players is stupid and they need more heart and soul.

DA
Idk, I don't think it's fair to lump all of USA hockey in with the Lombardi/Torts mindset on display in this tournament. They've done a pretty great job in player development over the past few years. They have a ton of young talent that is not only really good, but good at playing together (see: Team NA), and I think at least some people in that org are going to push to have a younger, better team next time around. They're not putting in all that work for nothing, lol.

Yeah, the ADM has been extremely successful. They've won like eight or nine of the last U18s tournaments, they have several WJC medals, and they've come in third and fourth recently at Worlds despite sending teams made up of NCAA players. Hell, Lombardi asked for Eichel this time around. And it's worth remembering they invited young guys like Galchenyuk and Jones to USA camp in 2014.

The issue is definitely the senior men's team level, and honestly I think the talent coming up, that USA Hockey has been promoting for four years now, will force change.

ayrt
Yeah, they've had a pretty consistent problem of icing teams that are a few years too old in big senior men's tournaments, but I think it'll become impossible to keep ignoring their young talent in the future. Or at least I hope. But they're not investing all that time and money into building youth teams that have perfect chemistry together just to win U18s.

They've been pretty "build the best team" for U20s, too - some people say they snub CHL players, but I don't see it that much as Canada snubbing NCAA players.

IIHF Worlds is clearly used for development, which is great in its own way. I think it was beneficial for Eichel, Larkin, Matthews all the last two years.

I'm sure they will add more younger players. What I don't think is that different people will be in charge of the team or claim to have changed their philosophy.

I don't just mean adding younger players though- the philosophy they have in terms of their development program is far beyond just #grit or whatever, and that makes me think that at least some people that work for them are going to be displeased with the team/personnel chosen for this tourney. USA hockey isn't some kind of truculence monolith, in other words.

The ADM emphasizes skill and athleticism, and also not focusing on specializing too early. And the NTDP takes a lot of small, skilled kids - there's someone on the U17s who's 5'3", for example.

DA

Finally, a hockey player that isn't taller than me!

Eh, I don't think Lombardi/Burke/Holmgren/Poile are a grit and truculence monolith either. I do think they chose players that Tortorella has supposedly worked well with in the past like Dubinsky, but their stated goal with this team was to find good team guys who would do what their coach asked of them. The problem with that is that guys who get that rep, get it because they aren't throwing up huge points — if they were, that's what people would be talking about. I've already seen far too many narratives about how Team USA looked flat, they didn't seem to be trying, etc. instead of the truth: they picked a bunch of slow dudes, and of course, they got outskated.

tl;dr I don't think they left Phil Kessel off because he lacks truculence; I think they left Phil Kessel off because the Toronto media has successfully painted him as locker room cancer.

DA

Kind of funny to think that if they kept Poile from Sochi they might have gotten that philosophy change, at least based on how he's built the Preds since then.

#26 — Vanek! with a Jurco

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